Much of the popular discussion of the trust question has proceeded upon the assumption that trusts are the result of some sort of immoral conduct which should be made illegal. But the same facts which led to the grant of exclusive franchises (legal monopolies) in the case of local public utilities, have led also to a belief that many of the monopolies which have grown without formal legal grant may likewise be beneficial if subjected to proper public control. The courts in this country, as well as many economists who specialize on “trusts,” have long since come to the conclusion that the anti-trust laws, even if desirable, do not in all cases furnish a sufficient solution of the monopoly problem, and that accordingly governmental price-fixing may be a desirable supplement. But neither the courts nor the teachers of “trusts” seem fully to realize that the determination of a “fair price” is not a search for some objective fact, but that it involves the adoption of a policy; and that the policy cannot be adopted intelligently without a drastic revision of accepted economic theory as well as the accepted theory of private ownership; and that the officials charged with the formation of the policy must perforce resort to some theory as to the proper distribution of income and as to the channels into which industry should flow.
Robert Lee Hale, Economic Theory and the Statesman, in The Trend of Economics 189, 193 (Rexford Guy Tugwell, ed., 1924).
Commentators regard the [Alcoa] case as one of the most powerful statements in antitrust jurisprudence for the robust efforts to constrain dominant firms. Discussions of the case often place [eminent progressive jurist] Learned Hand at the center of attention and ascribe to Hand the views espoused in the court’s decision. Hand believed otherwise. He disliked the antitrust laws from his earliest days in public life. In a representative statement of his views, Hand wrote to a friend in 1914:
“I do not agree by any means that the Sherman Act is of value or that the progressive party should take its position against monopoly. . . . I have always suspected that there are monopolies possible which depend for their maintenance wholly upon economic efficiency and which it would be an economic blunder to destroy.”
. . .
In a separate memorandum [in the Alcoa case], Learned Hand noted: “There are two possible ways of dealing with [monopolies]: to regulate, or to forbid, them. Since we have no way of regulating them [because regulatory legislation has not been put into place], we forbid them. I don’t think much of that way, but I didn’t set it up; and now the ordinary run of our fellow-citizens — some, even of the ‘rugged individualists’ — regard the Sherman Act as the palladium of their liberties.”
Andrew I. Gavil et al., Antitrust Law in Perspective 475, 477 (3d ed. 2017).